Why I Don't Like Windows 10 and MS

In quite a few articles on this blog I have referred to, quoted from or linked to one of the web sites I regularly draw information from; I am talking about Tech Support Alert aka Gizmo's Freeware.

Two days ago they published an article titled "Windows 10 connects to these websites after a clean installation". Since many of my customers are not very technically minded let me quote some points that I consider to be the important details. 

IMHO it is, to say the least, misleading to use Microsoft's wording "telemetry" when our Windows 10 systems talk to Microsoft [MS] all the time without ever having asked our permission. They even don't ever tell us about the simple fact that they do that; you have to be a technology geek and read lots of very technical stuff to even become aware of what is going on.

The article lists 20 web sites that Windows 10 connect to when you start a brand new Windows 10 system. All these sites collect technical information about our computers and about us. As a simple example: Why does MS want or need to know where I am? That is information I personally would only disclose to the police if they ever wanted or needed to know that.

Here is list from above mentioned article. I have added the bold typeface in Line 1.

Windows 10 connects to one or more websites in these categories:

• Cortana and Search
• Certificates
• Device authentication
• Device metadata
• Diagnostic data
• Font streaming
• Licensing
• Location
• Maps
• Microsoft account
• Microsoft store
• Network connection status indicator (NCSI)
• Office
• OneDrive
• Settings
• Skype
• Windows Defender
• Windows Spotlight
• Windows Update
• Microsoft forward link redirection service (FWLink)

All this can on slower Internet connections add significantly to the time it takes for the system to start up. I have experienced that quite often when a sluggish or outright slow system all of a sudden works with normal reaction times after all that got turned off.

And to top it off, the program I use to turn off this talking back to MS is from a well reputed company and totally free.

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Please stay safe.